The following is a reply I made on 9JUN2010 to a post made on facebook back on 2JUN2010 related to the realities of "Clean Coal" as it was used in the lexicon of the time, by a collegue of mine, Colin Bennett of the George Mason University Sustainability Office. While a tad old, I thought I needed to get it into my blog posts for some wider readership than a reply to a facebook post gives.
"Colin,
Thanks for the open letter and I greatly appreciate your perspective and taking on this issue. I too agree we need to call things as they really are, and “----- coal” is simply not clean from a purely objective, bottom line point of view.I do have two comments on this however:
1) One of the tragedies of environmental and energy sustainability is the hyper-sensitivity of the general public to the drawbacks to nuclear energy. When you say “nuclear” two things come to mind: a) a mushroom cloud or b) the fallout of Chernobyl. We have to recognize that so long as we require energy to live our lives (and turning back the clock on technology and a way of life without it is highly unlikely) we have to have an energy source to power them. There is no energy source, NONE, that does not have a draw back in some way that has potential to hurt the environment. Nuclear is no exception, and I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. But I will state that most people discount it so rapidly because of the over-hyped, over-scared, over-stigmatized campaign that was waged for the entirety of the Cold War period. The immediacy of the end of the world as a result of nuclear war, and radiation, was pressed upon insidiously through all forms of media and was amazing pervasive. The parsing of the difference between a rocket with a nuclear warhead and the image of the cooling tower as being distinct and starkly unrelated was never emphasized in this context. Consequently, pressing now, like many nations have, for energy independence through the use of nuclear energy is not just smirked at in some circles, but seen as antithetical to being environmentally friendly. I bring this up in relation to “----- coal” because, I think all of us who are fighting for the world to reduce GHG emissions, need to remember this past history and not over stigmatize something to the point that we have done with nuclear energy. I say this because of point #2.
2) With regards to fossil fuels, specifically, when we look at defining the broader “sustainable energy future” we must recognize that there are two ways to define “sustainable” that may or may not be congruent.
The first, which I think we both subscribe to, is based upon a world-wide view of ecology, resources, and sociology that desires us to overall reduce our net consumption of the earth and, if possible, enable it to be in balance such that the current net ecological trends can be reversed or at least stabilized for the future, infinatum.
The second, which we have to acknowledge, is that a society uses such resources at its disposal such that they are renewed or enable continued growth in such a way as to not further curtail consumption or enable us to continue in the social norms we have for the foreseeable future and doing so without harm to others or the planet, as much as is possible, at the same time.
While we would all like to see the end of fossil fuel emissions as a way to stop the vast majority of GHG emissions, I will tell you that no matter what happens in the future, burning things to get energy from them will remain fundamental in societies as the grow, especially in the developing world, for the decades, if not centuries, to come. This is mainly because much of the global south finds itself either in a position where it is prohibitive to develop non GHG power generation schemes (capital outlays and credit extensions are out of reach for massive solar, wind, or hydro projects) or they are banned from them (fear of any kind of nuclear proliferation is at the cornerstone of this). As a result of this, many of these nation states will continue to try to use definition #2 of sustainability, if they are even that egalitarian. So finding ways to better burn things (e.g. "cleaner"), such as dirty coal, is not an unworthy investment of time, material and human energy; and, honesty, should be encouraged. We just have long way to go to the point where fossil fuels are going to be dinosaurs again. One of our keys to making sustainability work is making an economic model that turns environmental stewardship into a net profit maker, not a “cost of business”, and, while it isn’t a final or “best” solution, developing and looking to use “----- coal” technology, until we can realize an economy that does not ignore the maxims of the first definition of sustainability, we have to press some measures that are interim and at least making a step in the right direction.
Thanks again for your heartfelt and on target plea. And I thank you for the chance to comment on it to ensure that the “green dialogue” is indeed a dialogue that all can get into."
